


Ripped Seams

by Glaucopis



Series: Tales of the King [2]
Category: DA:O - Fandom, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Feelings of guilt, Friendship/Love, Friendship/love triangle, Grief, Mourning, Multi, conflicted friendship Alistair/Male Cousland, conlficted Zevran/Alistair, finally edited this to fit my continuity, intense bromance, lots of yelling, post da:o, sacrificed warden, what a relief, ye olde grief!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 04:43:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8387644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glaucopis/pseuds/Glaucopis
Summary: Alistair and Zevran have violently severed ties right after Cousland's death. The newly-crowned King of Ferelden has barely held it together during his first few weeks of chaotic reign, crushed by the memories of what happened. So when the Assassin comes back to confront him about the secrets that still linger between them, things quickly take a turn for the worse.Set after 'Overheard', but it shouldn't be too confusing.





	

 

 

_The sky is so red above their heads it looks like it's about to rain down blood._

_Cousland is still holding his sword, white knuckled, pale from exhaustion except for that awful rush of red cascading down his face from his split forehead. It covers almost exactly half his features and he has to constantly blink the blood away from his right eye._

_“Do you really believe,” Alistair screams, his voice raw, desperate, “that I'm going to let you do this?”_

_He doesn't know it yet, but his throat is going to hurt for days from how hard he's shouting:_

_“Do you take me for a coward ?!”_

_The Archdemon is trashing on the cold, hard, stone. Its screams of agony pierce their ears, and its giant, ugly wings rasp loudly against the ground. There's still strength in Cousland's voice as he yells back, waving his sword towards the city._

_They can see all of Denerim from this tower._

_“You are the King, Alistair!” Cousland bellows, eyes still full of fire, “You are the one that has to live!”_

_His iris looks ten times greener in his bloodshot eye._

_Alistair limps weakly towards him. His femur is shattered, but he doesn't know it yet, and he can't feel any pain right now other than the one crushing his chest. Cousland's fingers ghost over the pendant around his neck. Two of them are broken, sticking out awkwardly at a crooked angle from the others, Alistair can see it even from that distance._

_“Besides,” Cousland starts, and his eyes suddenly go blank, and it's the most terrifying thing Alistair has even seen._

_He screams and screams to cover up his words, to make him shut up, but he can't, he can't, and Cousland's voice is expressionless and he's saying, Maker, no, he's saying that..._

  


 

“Your Majesty?”

Alistair raised his head a little too abruptly. The faces of his Council's members were all turned to him with various degrees of worry, or maybe exasperation, he couldn't really tell. Eamon, in particular, was glaring at him with a scowl that looked as frustrated as it was pained.

“Erm, yes, of course, My Lord,” Alistair stammered, doing his best to try and remember what in the Maker's name had just been said.

How important could those preparations be, anyway? Wasn't a castle a castle? Did the visiting Orlesians really need all these special attentions, golden chamber pots, flowers on their seats, a form of cheese in every room and whatnot?

“Do what you feel is adequate,” he resorted to, and Eamon sighed.

“Very well, ” he said, and they all got up like one man except for the King.

Eamon briefly touched his shoulder while passing behind his seat. 

“I need to speak to you in your study,” he said, and Alistair hummed his consent distractedly.

He waited for everyone to be out of the Council room before resting his face on both his hands and yawning hard, not even bothering to cover his mouth. Maker, his sleep had been so bad, these last few days, he thought while stashing the documents spread out in front of him. He constantly felt like he had just been hit on the head with a mace. 

Alistair would never have thought he would get worse nightmares _after_ the Blight than during it, but apparently, he had been wrong. He had all but lost count of all the nights he'd woken up screaming and grasping at his sheets, not knowing where he was, his huge room foreign and full of dark corners. Familiar green eyes, dull with pain and weariness, seemed to be lurking everywhere as soon as he closed his... Repressing a shiver, Alistair got up, a little too fast, because his head started spinning.

Maker, this was going to be a long evening.

“Your Majesty,” Meera saluted when he got out of the room.

She immediately stepped after him, ghosting barely one arm behind. He hated the habit. What did she think was going to happen to him that she couldn't prevent if she stood just a little outside his personal bubble?

“Captain, could you please just give me some air?” he sighed, for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Yes, your Majesty,” the tall woman said, doing absolutely nothing different.

When they got to the study, she placed herself outside the door, as usual, and Alistair entered his office. Eamon stood next to his desk, but another figure was waiting by the fire. Quite small in stature, and with long, blonde hair. 

Alistair's mouth went dry.

“Here comes our beloved ruler,” Zevran said pleasantly, familiar accent as marked as always.

His slim smile sent shivers down Alistair's spine.

“Do you want me to stay?” Eamon offered, barely concealing his expression of distrust.

The King waved him down.

“No,” he said, trying to sound as calm as he could, “Please, leave us. And take the Captain with you.”

“Your Grace...” Eamon started, but Alistair had no patience for his preoccupation.

“Now, My Lord,” he snapped, before adding, more gently: “If you please.”

Eamon straightened his back and sighed heavily.

“Very well,” he said.

He bowed shortly and left the room. As Alistair heard his and Meera's footsteps fade in the distance, Zevran sat down, uninvited, in a chair. 

“This wine they serve you here really is not bad, Your Highness,” the elf said, taking a sip from the cup he was holding.

Alistair didn't move, nor return his fake smile. Through gritted teeth, he asked:

“What do you want, Zevran?”

He had not seen the elf in at least four months. After the Crows' attempt to murder him here in Denerim, and what had happened in the wake of that – Alistair pushed the thought away, queasy – Zevran had suddenly left, all but vanishing for the longest time. Rumours had reached him of the Crows recent... _hierarchical restructuring_ , but Alistair had received no direct news from his former companion.

Unsurprisingly, seeing in what kind of terms they had left each other.

“I just came to see how 'His Grace' was doing,” Zevran shrugged, irony dripping from his words, “Out of curiosity.”

Alistair snorted.

“But of course,” he said bitterly.

He moved to the desk, laying his documents down on it, trying to ease the flare of anger that had taken his guts. The elf was dressed in Antivan fashion, and his limp was completely gone. Alistair still remembered how much he had bled on the steps of the Chantry, Crow dagger stuck to the hilt inside his thigh.

“I heard there was going to be another ceremony for him,” Zevran said nonchalantly, “In Redcliffe, this time. With a statue, and all.”

Alistair fought hard against the icy hand that had just closed around his throat. There was no need to ask who “him” was.

“Why do you care?” he gritted out coolly, feeling his own hands curl into fists, “His funeral was already not good enough for you, apparently, since you didn't deign showing up. How is this any different?”

Zevran's shoulders stilled imperceptibly. Alistair almost wished the assassin was going to lash out at him, so he would have an excuse to cave his face in with his fist.

“Little boy,” the elf said grimly, watching the wine spin inside his cup, “wanting to tell a lesson about grief.”

He drained it and locked eyes with him, amber irises hard and cold as marble.

”Tell me, how is Anora?” he asked slowly, forming every word with deliberate care, “Has she finished mourning the father you murdered in front of her?”

Alistair's mouth twitched, and his nails dug deep inside his palm. Anora's screams as she rushed to Loghain's body still echoed in his head as clear as they had that day, in the Landsmeet hall. Her face had been wet with blood as she cradled him. And Aedan...

Cousland's nauseated reaction at his decision to execute the traitor was one of the things that haunted Alistair the most. How his friend had closed his eyes and turned from him, telling him to do whatever he felt he must, was one of the last ever exchanges he had had with the Warden. They had already grown so distant at that time, Alistair closing himself off behind a wall of silence, Cousland too proud to try and approach him again after one too many cold rebukes. How the others had tried to bridge things between them, and how fast time had laid their efforts to waste...

But killing Loghain? No, Alistair still didn't regret it, he thought icily. Not even doing it in front of the entire Landsmeet, under the eyes of his own daughter. 

That was perhaps the most terrifying part of it all, wasn't it? Maybe Anora was right in saying he could be nothing but a tyrant, driven only by his personal vendettas. But for what had happened to Duncan, to Riordan, and to Cailan, seeing Loghain's guts spill on the marble floor was nothing. The days had passed but Alistair still felt like he should have killed him slower.

So if the elf was trying to play on his feelings of guilt, he had better try and come up with something else.

“Why are you here, Zevran?” the King growled menacingly.

The elf got up from his chair in a long, fluid motion, and rested his empty cup on the mantle of the fireplace.

“I came to pick up our conversation where we left it,” he said, before adding: “These long weeks of... work,” he paused, smiled at him sneeringly, “have given me with plenty of time to think. I have arrived to some conclusion, and came back to settle the matter with you, Your Grace.”

The memory bit, acerbic, at the back of Alistair's mind: Zevran sitting up on the cot the Sisters had laid him on after the Crow had stabbed him, hand tugging adamantly at the hem of the King's shirt, and eyes seeping with spite.

 _“Don't touch me, Theirin,”_ the elf had spat at him, despite the gashing wound on his leg oozing blood everywhere, _“I will not have you act as a friend, when we both know that you let him die on purpose.”_

Alistair had gotten up without a word and walked straight out of the Chantry. Later that night, alone in his room, he had hurled his guts out for hours,. The next day, Zevran had disappeared. 

His had been one of the first faces he had seen after Leliana had found him kneeling over Cousland's body. The explosion had made him deaf, blood running slowly from his ears, so he had not heard the people calling for them. He had been holding on to his friend's sword and shield and refusing to let go, they had later told him, but he remembered little of it. He was sure his mind had snapped at that point, and a lot of things from the hours following the Demon's death were still missing from his memory. But he remembered seeing Zevran's face as Leliana helped him stand on his broken leg. The elf had seen the shattered shield hanging from his hand, and looked like he had just been stabbed in the gut. 

After that, he'd been missing half the time. He had not come to the funeral, and maybe it was for the better, because in the few moments he _had_ been there, Alistair couldn't even stand to look at him, feeling every time he saw the elf that Cousland was just going to come out of the nearest door to circle his waist with his arm, smiling and calling out to him to share in a joke.

And now, Zevran was there, meaning to finish what he had started last time.

“At the very beginning,” the elf was saying, walking around the room like it was his personal study, “I thought you disapproved of us because of the men thing. I had underestimated you on that aspect, that, I concede.”

Alistair was so tense his head was spinning. Maker forgive him, he felt at the brink of a complete catastrophe. Where in Andraste's name was the elf going? What did that have to do with anything?

He got it that Zevran thought he was utter shit, and couldn't believe what had happened at the top of the tower. To be honest even _he_ didn't, half the time. How could Alistair be standing here when Cousland, who was so much better than him in every facet of his being, had died? 

So alright, he had to have acted cowardly, out of personal distaste for him, or some other nonsense, for that to happen. Zevran could believe whatever he fancied; Alistair wasn't going to blame him. But why come rub his face in it? 

A small part of him had hoped those had been grief-ridden words, devoid of meaning, and that maybe Zevran had come back to apologize. Well, he had been wrong.

He wondered if Zevran had any idea how close to outright breaking his mouth against his knuckles the King felt. Apparently, not, because he went on:

“I then spent a long time believing you simply didn't trust me, given the Crow business. This I found reasonable, if not a little bit annoying. But then as time passed it all got much, much clearer...”

The elf walked slowly towards him, and Alistair didn't flinch, jaw set so hard his teeth hurt. What could the elf say that he hadn't already told himself? That he had failed at saving him because he was weak? That Cousland was the strong one, and that he had been more than happy to let him die in his stead?

Had he just gone mad, and was looking for a good excuse for a fight? Because if that was what he wanted, the King was more than happy to oblige. He braced himself, ready to withstand any hit, but nothing could have prepared him for what the elf said then:

“You wanted him.”

Alistair's mind went blank, and he felt like he had fallen from a tall building, all air knocked right out of his lungs.

“Or me, or us, for all it matters,” the elf added with a dismissive gesture of his hand.

His voice had turned into a low growl, and he raised a finger to point at Alistair's chest, as he went on:

“Do you think I did not know, with the way you stared? That I didn't hear you service yourself right next to us?”

Alistair's heart sank so deep in his chest he thought it had stopped. His palms got sweaty and cold, his blood thundering in his ears. All the rage he felt had melted away into pure, unadulterated dread.

“What-” he croaked weakly, heart bubbling right behind his lips, certain he was going to throw up right there and then, “What are you saying?”

“Do not try to fool me, Theirin!” Zevran shouted, not stopping, digging his index hard into his rib cage, “He may have thought you changed because he had made you King, but we both know that's not it. Who did you want, really? Was it him, or maybe me?”

Alistair's back was almost at the wall right now, and he felt tears fog up his vision, his bottom lip shake pitifully. He had feared this so much, and it was worse now than everything he had ever imagined. All this time since that awful, awful day when he had overheard them, Alistair had felt everything had changed. But he knew now that it was worse than that, didn't he? He knew he had been carrying these feelings inside him from way before, and that that night had just been the last drop to make his shameful cup run over. 

He had been petrified at his feelings for Cousland, and Zevran, even if both felt so different, so much that he had pushed them both away. Maker, he still didn't know what it was he felt, and all of it had been covered up with so much grief, by now, the whole thing felt like a ball of blades so sharp he couldn't even pick it up, least of all untangle.

Alistair felt like his knees were going to give up on him, but the elf was not done. 

“Is this why?” Zevran kept going, merciless, furious, his whole face a mask of icy rage, “ Did you let him kill himself, did you hate him, because you were jealous?”

The words went through him like a spear. Something tore inside Alistair's head, like a gear jamming out of a trebuchet's mechanism. Too much, this was too much, to hear him say that to his face like he really meant it. 

His vision blurred red and he lashed out, grabbing Zevran's shirt and pulling at it so hard he heard it rip, turning around and smashing the elf against the wall with all his strength.

“Are you fucking mad?!” he roared, face only inches from his, “What is wrong with you?!”

His voice was jagged and coarse and cracking at the edges, pure hatred filling his belly with lead, and Zevran didn't even blink, face frozen in a jaded expression. 

“How sick are you, Crow, that you would think something like this?” Alistair kept going, crushing the elf against the cold stone wall.

Something wet ran down his cheeks, but he couldn't stop it, his throat was strangled with pain and Zevran's eyes were like stone.

“He was my friend!” he shouted at him, the words scorching his lips, the pain of it all so real, so fresh, twisting his guts into tight, agonizing knots, “I loved him! I loved you both!”

The memories were overflowing him, the sulfur smell of the Demon's fire, Cousland's face wearing half a mask of crimson blood, his last words seared raw into his brain. 

“I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't let me!” he all but screamed, “He wouldn't let me die, Zevran, but I tried, Maker, I tried so hard!” 

His hand was shaking now, like an old man's. The whole castle had probably heard him, but Alistair didn't care. He felt the tears drip down his chin and into the Crow's shirt. All these days of exhaustion and nightmares and finding himself a small corner to hide in, unseen, as he gasped for breath, had worn his mind down. He was feeling it slip away like water in a child's hand.

“Maker's breath, Zevran...” Alistair sobbed, pressing his forehead to his own fist, the assassin's smell all over him, all spices and sandalwood and memories of Cousland's laughter, “ How could you think something like that?”

They stayed like this, with Alistair's face buried against Zevran's chest, and the elf pinned against the wall by the King's weight, body shaking and twitching against him with painful, choked sobs.

“I don't,” Zevran finally let out after a few, long instants of silence.

His voice was blank, exhausted. He raised his hands from his sides, where they had been hanging, useless, and closed them around Alistair's back. He pressed his nose into the King's short hair, holding him close, and Alistair had to bite his lip to stop himself from loosing it completely, wanting nothing but to scream into Zevran's chest until his throat was bleeding. 

“I know you tried,” Zevran whispered softly, rubbing small circles into his clenched shoulders, “I should not have said that. I'm sorry.”

His words ran over Alistair like warm milk down a sore throat. Something inside him untied, like a hangman's knot he had not realized was squeezing his neck shut. Releasing the pressure on the elf's chest, Alistair opened his eyes.

“T's alright, really,” he breathed, voice weak, “I guess I was running out of reasons to hate myself, anyway.”

Zevran let out a sigh, and Alistair heard him chortle a little, a sound so unexpected he thought he had dreamed it. He disentangled himself from the elf's arms and wiped his eyes with both palms, inhaling deeply to try and steady his shaky breath. 

He hadn't imagined it. The elf was smiling a strange, sad little smile.

“But you did touch yourself,” he said matter-of-factually, and much to his own surprise, Alistair couldn't help but laugh a little himself through his tears, sniffling, wiping his nose with the hem of his velvet sleeve.

This whole ordeal was so absurd. What did it all matter now? 

“I did,” he admitted, feeling unexpected, overwhelming relief flood him as soon as those words left him, “Maker forgive me, I did.”

He froze.

“Did he know?” he asked, terrified of the answer.

Zevran shook his head.

“Why would I tell him such a thing?” he said, “No, I kept it to myself. You see now how that thought festered.”

Alistair combed a hand through his hair, rubbing again at his eyes.

“For my defence,” he started, feeling how ridiculous this all was, how utterly absurd, that something so small had crystallized all of his fears for so long, “I was still... chaste, and you were literally a foot from me. Also, the Warden thing...”

Zevran nodded, very serious, like he was weighting a particularly important argument. Alistair wondered how he did it,: how could he keep his facade so completely impervious, even at a time like this?

“Indeed,” the elf was saying, “ What's an innocent, blushing virgin to do in a case such as this? It's all but natural. And believe me,” he added with a wink, “I know all about the Warden thing.”

Before Alistair could even begin to be able to form an answer, Zevran sighed.

“I was making no sense,” he said, “I had to know this.”

He rested his back on the side of the fireplace, and the flames bathed half in face in soft, yellow light. He crossed his hands, tugging at an old scar on his left thumb.

“I suppose this whole affair is so ugly, a reason for it all would really have been welcome. I wished there was someone to blame for it. Other than him, I mean. And myself, obviously.”

He stood silent for a moment, before resuming:

“I thought to myself, you were there, so it had to be you, and it had to be for some twisted reason.” 

He let out a soft, mocking scoff, as if he thought himself so silly.

“So typical of me, isn't it? Never could let go of my flair for the dramatic...”

His eyes had glossed over with memories, but his head suddenly jerked up.

“And the way he spoke of you all the time,” he stated, with some exasperation, “I believed at first you had already bedded. It was kind of annoying, really. Alistair this, Alistair that, _'do you see how fast he moves', 'can you believe both his hands are sword-hands'?_ Mine are too, thank you very much. Oh, and _'he knows all the things, he's a real Grey Warden'_ , he used to say, _'unlike me'_. ”

Alistair's eyes widened.

“What?” he croaked, looking at the elf in disbelief.

Zevran scoffed, like he thought Alistair was pulling his leg.

“Come on, you had to know,” he said, “It was constant. The others were going crazy as well.”

Alistair felt his eyes fog up again, and forced himself not to crack another time.

“He used to do that all the time, but with you!” he blurted out, remembering Cousland's entranced stare as he motioned as discreetly as possible to the elf, “ _'Don't you believe he looks so handsome?', 'I wish I had half his wits', 'I want him to teach me his dagger throw'._ ”

Zevran smiled.

“My dagger throw is a secret forever sealed,” he murmured.

They stared at each other, the tragedy of it so clear, looming over both their heads. 

He was never coming back. 

“I've told you the truth about that day,” Alistair said, crossing his arms in front of himself like if it could somehow help him feel less exposed, “but Maker, how I've feared you were right. I keep thinking that if we had not fought, he wouldn't have...”

He trailed off, unable to say the words.

He had not told Zevran all of the truth, of course. There were still words Alistair knew he would never repeat to any living soul, let alone Zevran, words that he was going to carry with him to the grave, the ones that had fallen out of Cousland's mouth as his eyes died down. How quick the thought covered his entire body in cold sweat, how fast it made him feel like his heart was going to explode.

“I was wrong,” the elf said, facing him straight, and his look had lost that hard edge from before, “You were only confused, and so was I, and so was he.”

Alistair lowered his gaze and felt layer after layer of fear shrug from his shoulders, leaving him naked and shaking, but lighter than he had ever felt in the last two months.

“Those were confusing times,” he just said, feeling weak and tired, but more alive than he had in a long while.

He was going to muster up his courage and say "thank you", but Zevran sprung up suddenly, his eyes widening a little.

“Wait a minute, my friend,” the elf realized, squinting at him quizzically, “did you just say " _was_ chaste?"”

Alistair blushed hard, and he leaned against his desk, lowering his head in hopes of covering up the familiar pink hue of his cheeks. It didn't much work. 

“Did I? I meant “am,”” he said, before palming at his neck, and adding: “ The... _situation_ on that front is quite unchanged, I'm afraid.”

Zevran mouth curved up in one of his savvy smiles.

“You know,” he said, voice lower, “I could very well be of assistance, on that front.”

Alistair's entire body stiffened, and a long unpleasant shiver ran down his spine.

“Andraste's Mercy, Zevran,” he sighed, “How can you still say stuff like that?”

Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he shifted uneasily.

“After all we've been discussing?”

There was a pause, then, and when Zevran finally spoke again, his voice was full of barely-concealed amusement.

“I meant I could introduce you to some people,” he clarified.

He let out a little chuckle, while Alistair shoved his face in his hand and wished the ground would swallow him whole.

“But alright,” Zevran added, shaking his head slightly, “I see where your mind is.”

“Get lost,” Alistair groaned, but despite the shame, he found he too was smiling, because really, he had missed this, hadn't he?

And just like that, it was over, all gone in the flash of Zevran's teeth while he laughed. 

 

They spent hours just talking in his study, after that. Alistair didn't know what Eamon had gathered of what was going down, but he had to have understood some, because not a single soul as much as knocked on the door.

They had some wine and went over the country's state, the elf's insight always surprisingly savvy, and Alistair listened to him intently, sitting on his huge mahogany desk, both hands closed around his cup, sipping from it slowly. 

They listed their companion's whereabouts, what they knew of them, at least. Wynne back at the Circle, Leliana to the Chantry, Sten to Seheron, and Morrigan, of course, still vanished. The dog of course had been... hard. Fergus said he had settled back alright, in Highever, but everyone still remembered how much the poor beast had howled, and really, it felt to Alistair like he wasn't the same, anymore.

“Oghren plans to join the Wardens?” Zevran repeated, incredulous.

“What did I tell you?” Alistair shrugged, “We'd let anyone in, we're so desperate.”

“You must be glad you left.”

It could have stung, but it didn't, and Alistair just jested back:

“Well, I am now.”

The attendant that usually came to light the candles when the sky got too dark didn't show, so Alistair took care of it himself, bathing the room in even more soft fire-light, nodding along to what Zevran was saying. When he was done, he sighed, and put his cup down.

“There is something you should have,” he said, and maybe the wine was bolstering him, or maybe it was just his sense of duty, because he went behind his desk and opened that one accursed drawer, the one he had not dared to even glance at for the last few weeks, and took out the necklace he had placed there.

It felt heavy as he held onto it tightly, swallowing hard at the knot that had formed in his throat. Alistair took the elf's hand in his own, and softly placed the charm on his palm.

“There,” he said, avoiding his gaze, knowing that whatever he saw there would certainly disrupt his control once again, “They gave it to me, but I'm certain he would've wanted you to have it.”

Zevran turned the charm between his fingers, slowly. Cousland's Chantry amulet, the unblinking, sacred eye all unpolished and worn down. The man never took it off, so it was all battered and dull... The Sisters had retrieved it from his body, and Fergus hadn't wanted it, saying his family sword was more than he needed. Who could blame him? 

Alistair knew how much the Chantry would have paid for this piece of the one they had started to call the Hero of Ferelden, to showcase to the faithful as a symbol of his devotion. The thought made him sick: all those people fighting for Cousland's posthumous allegiance... He could have given it to a companion, but they all already had something of his, and had asked for nothing. And Zevran... well, Zevran had not been there.

So it had ended up in that drawer, and never moved from there since, because the bare thought of it was enough to send Alistair on the verge of a breakdown every single time it so much as came to his mind.

 _“Aedan Cousland is already dead, Alistair,”_ the Hero had said to him with those dreadful, empty eyes, broken fingers touching the silver pendant as if to give himself strength, fire all around them and the agonizing screeches of the Archdemon raising to the sky, _“He died with his family in Highever, on that dreaded night.”_

“His mother gave him this, you know?” Zevran murmured, lightly caressing the thin rays of the Maker's sun in his palm. 

His voice tore Alistair from the flashes in his mind and he let out the trembling breath he hadn't realized he had been holding in.

“I didn't, no,” he admitted, and as the elf slowly passed the leather cord around his neck, the King wiped his eyes just a little, as discreetly as he could.

“Thank you, my friend,” Zevran said, and his voice sounded so tired, so spent, that Alistair couldn't refrain from erasing the small distance that still separated them.

He hugged him tight, squeezing his smaller body in his large arms, no other thought in his mind other than the wish to help him. He felt Zevran tense, a second before he relaxed into his arms, breathing slow and measured. If Alistair could offer just a little comfort, he thought, or maybe just share in a fraction of his pain, that would be enough.

“What a fool,” Zevran murmured, and there was no need for him to specify who he was talking about.

“Yes,” Alistair smiled softly, closing his eyes, “What an absolute idiot.”


End file.
